


what choice do i have?

by crepesculum



Category: Jewish Scripture & Legend
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Little Mermaid Fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-15 19:06:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13037517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crepesculum/pseuds/crepesculum
Summary: Esther's mother had been Mordecai's sister, before the land king's wizard had cursed the sea. Before Esther's parents had been lost and before Mordecai had been confined to this shark's shape.





	what choice do i have?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [antediluvian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/antediluvian/gifts).



Esther does not remember her parents, but Mordecai's stories make her feel like she does.

Sometimes, she thinks she remembers that her mother had hair like the kelp forests or that her father was strong enough to leap out of the water, powering himself high into the air, before crashing down beneath the waves again. She thinks she remembers her mother’s voice, clear and beautiful, as they floated on top of the waves.

These are not memories, though. They are just stories she's heard from Mordecai a thousand times since they came to the reef.

"Uncle," she would say, and the shark would turn towards her.

"Yes, fishele?"

"Tell me a story about my parents," she would say and Mordecai would. He would settle down in the sand and she would arrange herself on a large brain coral and he would tell her a story of his lost sister. Sometimes it was the same story, the ones he told over and over again; rarely, he found something she had done, or that Esther's father had, that he hadn't told Esther about.

She treasured every one of them.

Esther's mother had been Mordecai's sister, before the land king's wizard had cursed the sea. Before Esther's parents had been lost and before Mordecai had been confined to this shark shape.

Mordecai had fled from the destruction with Esther, far enough to escape the king's magicians. He returned to the shallows from time to time, but Esther was never allowed to join him.

"It isn't safe," he would say. Esther rather doubted it was any more safe for him than it was for her, but there was nothing to be said to Mordecai about it.

When Mordecai returned from his latest visit, Esther was trying to leap through the air, the way she had been told her father could.

Mordecai called out to her. "Fishele," he said.

Esther lept once more through the air, but she was tiring and it would have been rude to ignore him further. "Yes, Uncle?"

"I have news," he said. Something was wrong. Esther couldn't have placed the details of how she knew, but his body language had grown familiar to her over their years together on the reef, easily as familiar as his voice.

"What is it?" she asked.

"There may be a way to free us," Mordecai said. "From the wizard's curse."

He hadn't needed to say that. There was only one thing they were looking for an escape from. It wouldn't bring back Esther's parents. She knew that much. But she also knew -- she would do whatever she could, to free Mordecai, to reclaim the shallows where she had been born, to bring her people together again.

"What do I have to do?" She knew he would not have told her there was even a chance if he had not needed her help for this.

Mordecai swam in circles around her tail, clearly worried, then settled as much as he ever did, his side against her side. "We will need to visit the sea witch."

Esther's body would not let her inhale beneath the water, but she wanted to. She wanted to let the water flood her lungs and her veins, the way fear suddenly had.

Vashti had been queen above the surface once. She had left the shallows and made a home in the palace with Ahasuerus, until he had banished her. She was only the latest in a litany of reasons given to young girls in the shallows as to why they could not trust the rulers of the land.

Esther was as frightened of the sea witch as any of those girls had been. Vashti had come back from the shore wrong, not simply physically transformed, but dangerous, deadly, a monster for children's nightmares. There was always someone desperately enough to search her out, to seek her aid, but Esther had never thought she --

Perhaps it was a desperate enough situation to seek out Vashti, after all.

"Very well," Esther said. "Then we will go to the sea witch."

The sea witch lived in colder waters than Esther was used to. As they swam further from the reef, Mordecai began to tell her his plan.

The king, it seemed, was in search of a queen once again. It wasn’t much more than a rumor yet, ferried to the shallows by gulls and pipers, and from there to the fish, to the turtles, to Mordecai, but it was something.

“The sea witch can tell you how to win him,” Mordecai said. “And she can tell you how to rule him.”

Esther was not certain that she liked the idea of ruling anyone or anything, but she did wish to return to the shallows -- and to see Mordecai’s face again, instead of the shark’s body that had become all too familiar.

Eventually, they came to a cave. Esther’s whole body shuddered to look at it, though she could at least pretend it was the cold.

"Wait here," Mordecai said. "If I don't return -- go home and whatever you do, don't turn back."

Esther couldn't imagine actually leaving Mordecai within Vashti's cave, but she promised him that she would leave after a reasonable time if he did not return and then watched as he swam into the cave.

The cold was worse while she waited. She raced to the surface twice to catch her breath, but even the sun could not warm her -- and she did not want to linger too long, for fear that Mordecai would return and think that she had given up on him.

Finally, a burst of warm water filtered out of the cave, carrying Mordecai's voice with it. "Come in, fishele.”

It had to be him. No one else called her that.

For a moment, Esther held herself completely still. She could still turn back -- but then she would be leaving Mordecai and perhaps their only chance to reclaim the shallows.

She relaxed as soon as she was inside the cave. The water was warm once again and Mordecai looked safe, which mattered most of all.

Vashti reclined on a pile of bones and shells and stolen, dead coral, her tentacles mostly supporting her, but one was wrapped around a mirror and another around a dagger, and Esther could tell that she could -- and still might -- murder her without a second thought.

She was stunning.

Vashti lifted her head and looked past Mordecai to Esther. "Do you know what you're asking me to do?"

“Yes,” Esther said. She didn’t say but what choice do I have, but somehow she thought Vashti might have felt the same sort of trapped, once. What other reason would one have to leave the waters, even frigid ones such as these were, to marry the land king?

Vashti didn’t seem to hear her. “First,” she said. “First, you will lose your voice and oh, that will hurt most of all. The rest is easy, compared to losing your voice.”

Esther did not say anything.

“You will not be able to refuse the king. You will never be free of him, even if he casts you aside. He will haunt you, day and night. Do you understand?”

Before Esther could think of answering, the witch continued on.

She told Esther her story, details that Esther would never be able to forget. She told Esther that there were no guarantees, not on the land. That if she rose from the waves, she would be sacrificing her freedom -- and her life, if she could not convince the king to love her.

Finally, Vashti said, “Answer me, girl. Do you know what this means? Do you understand?”

"Yes.” She shut her mouth tight, closed her eyes, held herself as still as she possibly could, and then she opened her eyes and she said, “But what choice do I have?"

Vashti smiled.


End file.
